- ‘We will soon stop rail activities from Ebute Meta to Apapa’
President Muhammadu Buhari will launch the construction of Kano -Kaduna rail project in the next two weeks or one week plus, Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has said.
Speaking on Friday at the weekly Presidential Media briefing organised by the State House Media Unit in Abuja, Amaechi said “In the next two weeks or one week plus, we should be launching and commencing immediately, the construction of Kano-Kaduna rail. The President will be launching it.
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“The reason we are commencing immediately is because all the necessary contracts have been awarded. We have been waiting for too long for the loan now from China, it has not come. So, we decided to fund it from Budget. We have already paid $280m to them. We are about to pay another $100m.
“That will be about $380m. Kano-Kaduna rail is $1.2bn. The moment you pay about $380m, you must have paid one-third of the project. We believe that by the we get the loan, from the budget, we should have funded up between $500m and $600m so that we should be able to take the project nearly halfway before the fund will come.
“If we continue to wait for the loan, either from China or Europe, we may likely not complete it before we go. So, I made a decision as Minister in charge. I reported to the President that I would commence construction with our own fund and pending when the loan will fall through.
“We are just waiting for China to approve the loan for Ibadan to Kano. But since they have not approved it, we want to commence construction from the Kano axis to Kaduna.
“You are aware that we have finished Lagos-Ibadan and it is running. But there are minor things that I want to go and look at to make sure that those things are put in place.”
On the Ebute Meta Station -Apapa rail, Amaechi said “We will soon stop rail activities from Ebute Meta to Apapa. Why? We have finished. But we discovered when we are about to commission it that there was a place where they used to dump refuse.
“And if we leave it, in the next one year, it will begin to sink. So, we saw it. We said swallow your shame, bite your bullet now than to wait after one year and somebody will say it is a bad job.
“We said “stop, don’t carry any cargo, take off the track, excavate 10 metres down by removing all the refuse and replace the soil and put back the track.” We are given, two, three, four months to do all that. That is a decision I will communicate to them.”
